Internet Explorer Information

You were probably looking for something else, but you are seeing this
because you are using Internet Explorer.

I've been telling people for years not to use Internet Explorer
because it is not secure. It works as a vector for distributing viruses,
but more often it gets used to install spyware and other malicious
software on your machine- to the point where remote hackers could have
full control of your machine right now, and you would never know it
(unless you happen to notice that your machine is running very very
slowly, where it used to be really fast.)

In fact, it is impossible for anybody except Microsoft to make it
secure- and even though they have the source code, the original
programmers who wrote it in the first place, and a vested interest in
the goodwill it would give them to make a secure version, they seem to
have decided they don't really want to do it. Maybe if it were truly
secure they wouldn't be able to keep their own record of your web page
visits anymore?

Others have been saying the same thing as well- here are several
articles which more or less say the same thing...

Another
ZDNet article offers a reason WHY there's so much malware (malicious
software) floating around- because hackers are trying to take over
as many machines as possible, and then SELL the use of these hacked
machines to whoever wants to use them- especially spammers.

MSN's "Slate" web
site is even getting into the game... while they don't go so far as to
explicitly say "stop using IE" (they are owned by Microsoft, after
all) they do give a pretty fair treatment of why somebody would want
to stop using it.

2008-12-16 According to this BBC article,
Microsoft acknowledges this vulnerability in IE7, confirms that it is present
in earlier versions of IE, and is recommending that people switch to other
browsers until they can fix the problem (which, given Microsoft's history,
may take months if not years.)

2009-10-16
Back in February, Microsoft pushed out the ".NET Framework Assistant"
plug-in for Firefox, forcibly installing it on millions of machines
around the world, without asking permission or telling the owners of
these machines what was going on. They also built the plug-in in such a
way that, once it was installed, it couldn't easily be removed.

EIGHT MONTHS LATER, according to this Gizmodo article, Microsft
has ADMITTED that the plug-in opens up a "critical" security hole in
Firefox, and has released another
patch which supposedly fixes the problem. (The same vulnerability affects
Internet Explorer as well.)

So I have decided to help make people aware of this situation by not
allowing Internet Explorer to look at any pages on my web site, except
for the page you're reading right now. Any MSIE users who try to visit
my site will end up reading this page (the one you're reading right now)
instead.

2006-04-29 I found another site which is doing the same kind of
thing as what I'm doing here, although their version has a javascript
pop-up window which allows the user to eventually access the real web
page, and their link to download Firefox is actually downloading
"Firefox plus Google Toolbar" through the Google AdSense program, which
means that every time somebody downloads Firefox using the button from
your site, you get a dollar.

I'm not convinced that "Google Toolbar" isn't spyware itself, so I'm
not using that particular button here- although if you feel really
generous and want Google to pay me a dollar for telling you to download
Firefox, my version of that button is at the very bottom of this page.
(See, I'm not above trying to make a little bit of money as well- but I
don't try to hide it- Yes, if you click the "download firefox" button at
the bottom of the page, Google will send me one whole dollar.)

2007-08-18 There is a site which is blocking Firefox
instead of IE. His point is that many Firefox users are EVIL because
they use a plug-in called Adblock
Plus to keep from seeing the paid advertisements on his web sites,
and are therefore stealing money out of his pocket. He says that he
blocks all Firefox users because he has no way to detect whether or not
they're using Adblock Plus.

My response to this...

He's actually doing a SERVICE to the Firefox users of the world who
may not already know about Adblock Plus- at least now they have a name that
they can google for, even if they don't already know where to download
a copy for themselves.

Speaking for myself, I will never again run a browser without Adblock
Plus (or something similar.) I've gotten used to not seeing all of the
banner ads, so now when I have to use some other browser and I actually
see ads, especially the ones with animation and sound, it's
like a shock to my system. It irritates me even more than before I found
the Adblock plug-in to begin with.

Adblock Plus is actually based on top of another plug-in called Adblock. It
lets you block certain domains' advertisements from working, however the
list of what is and is not blocked is totally controlled by you. I was
using this for a while, and I was constantly having to add new hostnames
and regular expressions to their filter list as the "banner boys"
changed the URLs for their ads to try and work around these kinds of
filtering systems. I figure it makes more sense to use Adblock Plus,
whose block-list is automatically updated by other people who hate ads
as much as I do, and who have the time and patience to hunt them down
and maintain the list. However, if you want to control it all yourself,
Adblock is another option for you.

I also use NoScript,
which I find to be even more effective than Adblock or Adblock Plus when
it comes to blocking advertisements. It prevents JavaScript from unknown
sites from working unless I give those sites permission to run scripts.
I've never understood why advertising companies feel the need to send a
bunch of Javascript with their ads, rather than just sending the ad with
a click-through link.

The one exception I've seen to this is Google's Adsense program.
Their ads are text-only (no animated graphics or Flash nonsense,
although they are now doing some graphic banners) and the web page owner
can customize the colours to match the site, so the ads don't visually
distract from the page itself. The Javascript that they load with the ad
is responsible for customizing the colours and setting a cookie so that
if you click on an ad, the web site owner gets credit for the
click-through. Google has the right idea with their ads- I only wish the
other advertising companies would take the hint.

Yes, Adblock Plus is popular. WHY IS THAT, do you think? Could it
be that the vast majority of the people in the world DON'T WANT TO SEE
ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Could it be that people are tired of
advertisements which are so full of bright colours and animated graphics
that they distract them from reading the real content on the web site
they're trying to visit? Could it be that people are tired of banner-ad
vendors running javascript in their browsers, which try to literally
take over their browsers, monitor every web page they visit, install
"toolbars" and other forms of adware and spyware, and if the advertising
company's servers happen to become infected, install viruses on their
machines?

He's presenting himself as a greedy so-and-so who feels that, just
because he runs a web site, he is somehow entitled to override the expressed
wishes of his visitors and FORCE them to look at advertisements. Pardon the
language, but... what an arrogant prick! I'm sorry, but my browser is just
that- it's MY BROWSER. NOT YOURS.

Am I the only person who suspects that this isn't even a real
person, that it's actually Microsoft?

If nothing else, THANK YOU for redirecting people to your site... it's a good way
of telling people that whatever site they were about to see, would have
been full of annoying advertisements and probably would have tried to
infect their computer with some kind of spyware or a virus.

Other Browsers

So what are your options? What other programs are out there which
will do the same things you're currently using Internet Explorer
for?

Mozilla
Firefox is the browser I use myself, and which is my primary
recommendation to everybody. It's free, and by "free" I mean in both
ways- "free beer", meaning a zero pricetag, and "free speech" meaning
you can get the source code and modify it yourself if you are so
inclined.

It's available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris (both SPARC
and x86) and it's been called "the fastest browser on the planet". It
also supports several features for blocking ads and popups, and it
supports tabbed browsing- once you use it the first time you'll wonder
how you ever got along without it. (I know I find it painful to have to
use a browser without tabs...)

Mozilla
is another good choice. It's the open source version of what used to be
known as Netscape. It has the same browser engine as Firefox, but it
also includes a mail/news reader, a web page composer (think Frontpage
without all of Microsoft's goop) and an IRC (chat) program built in. It
has the same ad-blocking, popup-blocking, and tab features as Firefox,
and is even more configurable.

Both Firefox and Mozilla have "extensions" available which add even
more features to the browser. My favourite is Adblock, which allows you to block
ads and other undesirable content by specifying a portion of the URL.
For example, if you (like me) don't want to see anything which has
"/RealMedia/" as part of its URL because it's probably an
advertisement, Adblock lets you block just those items while viewing the
rest of the page.

Opera is another good
browser, but I don't use it because for a long time it was not free. You
could get a "free" version which comes with an advertising engine
bundled into it (everybody loves adware, don't we?) or pay $39.00 for
the commercial version without their built-in advertisements, and that
just rubbed me the wrong way.

Now that it's free (thanks to Opera giving Google preferred placement
on their list of built-in search engines) I may look at it... however
I've been using Firefox long enough now to be used to it, and to enjoy
it.

(See below for more information about Opera.)

There are many other browsers out there, feel free to drop me a line
(my email address is below) if you'd like to see your favourite browser
listed here (unless your favourite browser is Internet Explorer, in
which case you probably need to READ some of the articles listed at the
beginning of this page.)

Questions

Why am I reading this page, instead of the page I was really
looking for?

Because you're using Internet Explorer, and I have configured my
server to send all IE users to this page automatically. If you use a
different browser, you will have access to the normal content on my
site.

But I'm not using Internet Explorer, I'm using Opera. What's the
deal?

2005-12-22 You should no longer be forced to see this page
if you're using Opera. What made me change my mind, you may ask? My own
cell phone has Opera embedded as the browser, and no way to change
the agent string. I hadn't realized that some Opera installs didn't
have an easy way to change the agent string, or any way to access the
"opera.ini" file to change it by hand.

For those who do have access to their "opera.ini" file, find the line
which starts with Spoof UserAgent ID=, and change the existing
value (which will be either 3 or 5) to 1. What this value means:
1=Opera, 2=Mozilla, 3=IE, 4=Mozilla without mentioning Opera, 5=IE
without mentioning Opera. If you choose Mozilla, there will be a
Spoof Version Code= line next to it. That value will be 0 for
Mozilla (Netscape 5.0 and higher), 1 for Netscape 4.78, or 2 for
Netscape 3.0.

2005-12-22 Not eight hours after making the
change to allow Opera to view the site, I got an email from some AOL
LOSER who called me a liar (among other names), and then eventually said
that he's using Opera and still can't view one of the pages. I guess you
just can't please some people...

His message upset me so much that I couldn't think of a way to answer
him without lowering myself to his level, calling him names and so
forth, so I basically told him that because he was being such an
immature prick, I simply didn't want to answer him- even though I knew
what the problem was.

However, given the issue involved, I can see this being a problem for
others, so here's the secret- AOL SUCKS. Their desktop software works by
creating a VPN (virtual private network) into AOL's internal network,
and then forcibly redirecting all of your machine's network traffic
through their network. Part of their internal network is a set of web
proxy servers, which capture every web page request, make the same
request to the real web server, and return whatever the web server sent
back to the original client- but also keeping a copy for itself, so that
if another client (another AOL user) happens to request the same page,
the proxy server returns a copy of the page without consulting the real
web server.

This means that AOL's proxy servers are full of copies of the results
from the first time each user accessed a given page. And since 99.999%
of AOL users are also using IE, guess what AOL's cache is full of...
that's right, it's full of redirects to the page you're reading right
now.

So basically, AOL users are being forced to see this page even though
they may be running a real browser- and because these cached copies of
the pages are returned to AOL users without my server being consulted,
there's nothing I can do to fix it without removing the IE block
entirely- and that's not an option. If you're one of the rare few who
use AOL but know enough to use another browser, all I can suggest is
that you complain to AOL. Maybe they have some setting you can use to
bypass their web proxies... or if you have a real ISP that you use to
reach AOL's servers, try running your real browser while you are
connected to the ISP but not running any AOL software.

And for "wonder boy" with the magical spelling monkey (the AOL idiot who
sent me the email)... seriously, dude. Learn how to act like a
professional when you contact strangers on the Internet. If you act like
an immature 15 year old punk kid, that's how people are going to treat
you. (No insult intended to 15 year olds, by the way... unless you also
have a habit of calling total strangers names while asking them for
help.)

The information below used to be my old answer for Opera users. The
information is still valid, and I don't see any harm in leaving it
there, so if you're curious, enjoy.

A while back, Microsoft wanted a way to "encourage" people to use
IE instead of other browsers. As a test, they changed their msnbc.com
servers to deliberately serve broken pages to Opera browsers (kinda like
what I'm doing with the page you're reading right now, but Microsoft was
being sneaky about it.) When Opera showed them their proof and
threatened to sue them, Microsoft reportedly
paid over $12 million to prevent the lawsuit and mysteriously "fixed
the problem" which prevented msnbc.com from working correctly on
Opera.

While this was going on (or possibly earlier, I don't use Opera
myself so I'm not sure) Opera added an option to let the browser
"pretend" to be something else by sending another browser's
identification string with each request. I'm guessing they set IE as the
default choice for this option, because ever since I installed this page
(almost two months ago now) I've been plagued with questions about this
issue.

The answer is simple- find this option in Opera's preferences, and
make sure that the letters "MSIE" are not part of what Opera tries sends
to the server (it's usually called an "agent string", if that helps to
find the option.)

If this helps, your browser is sending the following agent
string:

CCBot/2.0 (http://commoncrawl.org/faq/)

If you see the letters "MSIE" in there, that's the problem.

It may also be helpful to know that my server thinks your browser's
IP address is 184.73.110.238. This
IP address has a reverse-DNS name of ec2-184-73-110-238.compute-1.amazonaws.com. If this is
not your IP, be aware that some ISPs (AOL in particular) have caching
proxy servers which may be holding this version of the page and serving
it to you from their cache, without actually contacting my server. If this
is happening, talk to your ISP about how to bypass their proxy. If they
tell you this is not possible, find another ISP.

Why did you set up your web server to show this page?

I feel that Internet Explorer has been a serious problem for the
Internet for long enough, and this is one way in which I can start
encouraging people to NOT use it any more.

HOW did you set up your web server to show this page? I run a web
server and would like to do something similar, or I want to see if I can
figure out how to "get around" your blocking.

I set it up using apache's
mod_rewrite.
My httpd.conf contains the following lines:

AND the item being requested is not "/glider-small-cyan.png" (the
"hacker" logo at the bottom of the page),

AND the item being requested is not one of the other items which I
have decided to allow people to view using IE,

THEN the browser's request will be transformed and the browser will
be redirected to the result. In this case, the transformation is to
replace the entire request ("^.*") with
"http://www.jms1.net/ie.shtml".

The result of all this is that no matter what page the browser asks
for, the browser is redirected to the target page unless the requested
item is the target page itself, or any of the other "approved" items
listed above.

If you're going to set up something like this, be careful that your
target page (where you're sending people) is "exempted" from
redirection- otherwise the server will send the same redirect to the
browser over and over again. Most browsers will detect this and give the
user an error about "recursive redirection" or "too many redirects", but
it is possible that a poorly written browser will try over and over,
causing a loop which could crash your server (or at least keep it busy.)
I found this out when Firefox (my current browser of choice) gave me a
"too many redirects" error when I first tried this.

As for "getting around" the blocking... that's simple. Use a browser
which doesn't include the letters "MSIE" in its identification string.
Oh wait- Internet Explorer doesn't let you control that without hacking the
registry? I don't know, but it seems like a lot of trouble just to
avoid using a different browser- if you're thinking about doing this,
you must be a serious IE lover (or a Microsoft employee.)

What's so wrong with Internet Explorer anyway?

Many programs- viruses, spyware, adware, and other types of
"malware"- use the security holes in IE to take control of your machine.
These programs could be doing anything- they could be mailing copies of
themselves to everybody in your address book, they could be installing a
program to let hackers and spammers remotely control your machine, they
could be keeping a log of the web pages you view and the people you send
and receive email with, they could be searching your hard drive for your
private files and sending them off to who knows where...

I have spent almost ten years now working in the ISP industry, and I
have seen first hand the level of headaches which are caused by IE and
its many bugs and security holes. I've even had users at ISPs where I
was working go so far as to blame ME and the ISP for "allowing their
machine to become infected" in the first place. I simply refuse to
deal with it any more.

The point is that IE is one of the easiest ways for malicious code to
get into your machine in the first place. If you stop using IE, your
computer becomes that much less a target for these kinds of attacks.
Internet Explorer is riddled with bugs and security holes. When
Microsoft wrote it, they were more concerned with getting it installed
on every single computer in the world than they were with security. Now
the fact that their software is systematically insecure is coming back
to haunt them.

Didn't Windows XP Service Pack 2 fix all this? Or Service Pack 3?
Or Vista? Or IE 7? Or IE 8?

Two answers for this one.

First, the service packs are only PARTIAL fixes for SOME of the
security holes. They haven't changed the fact that new vulnerabilities
continue to be discovered on a regular basis.

I have also not yet found anybody who actually likes the changes that
SP2 makes to IE6... their pop-up blocker is a pain to have to deal with-
the concept of "security zones" probably looked good on paper, and in
terms of allowing corporate IT people to pre-set their users' browsers
to run ActiveX and other dangerous items when they're being served from
an internal server it's not a BAD idea... but tying the pop-up blocker
into it, and not allowing any way for users to customize the list of
which servers are and are not allowed to use pop-up windows without
adding them to a "trusted zone" is absolutely the wrong idea. Maybe
there are servers out there for which I DO want to allow pop-up windows,
but not ActiveX controls...

Second, not everybody is able to use Service Pack 2 (or Service Pack
3, or Vista.) Some corporations won't allow them to be installed because
they break other programs they use, or just makes the machines unstable.
Some people aren't running Windows XP in the first place, and don't want
to pay the ransom and take the time to upgrade when what they already
have works for their needs.

Here's an idea... IE6 can be downloaded separately without having to
install Windows XP, right? It must be, I downloaded it for a client's
Windows 2000 machine a few years back... How about making the IE6
security fixes, such as they are, available as a separate download from
Windows XP Service Pack 2? Oh yeah, that might illustrate that
Internet Explorer and Windows are indeed separate programs, contrary to
what Microsoft tried to tell the court in their anti-trust
trial...

The purchase
talks died, by the way... when word got out that they were looking
into buying this company, they saw this flood of negative reactions from
the press and from their customers. I guess for once the interests of
their customers happened to coincide with the interests of their
stockholders...

So this is some kind of anti-Microsoft thing? You're probably one
of those "Linux people", aren't you?!

It's not really anti-Microsoft... just anti-Internet
Explorer.

And while I am a Linux
enthusiast, I don't scream it from the rooftops and try to force
everybody in the world to use Linux. It's not for everybody- but I do
think it's high time people started to realize that there are
alternatives out there, that Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer are
not the only game in town. I think people should at least look into the
alternatives. Linux is a good alternative for "standard" PC hardware,
and Apple's OS X is an excellent alternative (if you can afford the
Apple hardware to run it on.)

I think my biggest complaint would have to be their history of
using anti-competitive practices to gain and keep a monopoly position in
the computer software market, and to force their competition out of
business. Microsoft's history is full of companies whose technology they
have copied or stolen, and then forced out of business.

They also have a history of forcing people to upgrade by making newer
versions of their software not compatible with their older versions.
Case in point- Microsoft Office. Each new version deliberately removes
compatibility with another older version. This forces customers who may
be happy with the features of their Office 95 to upgrade because
"everybody else" is running Office XP and can't read files from their
clients.

They also have a history of their hiding information about how their
software works, in order to prevent other companies or people from
writing software to work with their file formats.

In a way I can't fault them for this... they are, after all, a
corporation, and the number one job of any corporation is to increase
the value of their stock in order to make money for their stockholders.
It's just too bad that most corporations today, Microsoft included, are
taking the position that increasing profits are more important than any
shred of common human decency- although that problem is not limited to
Microsoft by any means...

And lest we forget, Microsoft has a history of not writing their
sofware with security in mind (which is why you're reading this page
right now, instead of whatever else you were looking for.) Think about
it- how many security-related problems have been found and fixed, just
in the last year, with Microsoft's programs? How many more have been
found, but not reported to Microsoft? Or reported, but not fixed
yet?

In the interest of fairness, I should point out that I'm not totally
"against" Microsoft. There are some things they do well- Microsoft
Streets is one of the better consumer-level mapping programs out there
(although it's not the most accurate, in terms of streets missing and in
terms of the GPS accuracy of what they do have) and "Pandora's Box" is
one of the best games I've ever played, hands down. I bought and paid
for both programs years ago, and I have one laptop which runs Windows
2000 Professional (dual booting with Linux, of course) in order to use
these programs.

And yes, I do have a valid, legal license for the copy of Windows
2000 on the laptop.

So what if a virus gets into my machine? That's my business, not
yours!

Actually, when the virus in your machine tries to infect my
machine, whether the attack is successful or not, it is my
business.

And when your virus-infected machine starts spewing garbage all over
the Internet, using up all of the available bandwidth, and making it
difficult for me to do what I want or need to do, it is my
business.

And when your virus-infected machine sends me spam, it is my
business.

And when a million virus-infected machines out there start slamming
my server at the same time, preventing it from serving web pages and
handling email as I intended it to do, it is my business.

And when I have to spend an entire day at work, cleaning up some
virus outbreak which could have been prevented if IE didn't have more
holes than a block of swiss cheese, instead of doing my real job, it
is my business.

And when I have to go in to work at 3:30 on a Sunday morning because
a million virus-infected "spam zombie" machines around the world have
flooded my mail server and filled the hard disk, causing it to crash,
it is my business.

See the pattern here?

All it takes is one virus to make the entire Internet unusable. It
has happened before (remember "Slammer"?) and it can happen again... but
if enough people were using browsers other than IE, it would be that
much harder to make it happen again.

You have no right to force me to read this page! I demand to see
the original page I was looking for!

(This exact line was actually in an email that I
got from somebody before setting up this redirector page, when I was
redirecting MSIE users straight to a Yahoo News page about the Homeland
Security thing.)

You are correct, I don't have the right to force you to read this
page. You are welcome to stop reading it at any time.

So stop reading it.

Right now.

Okay, stop already.

Stop already!

Oh, you're still reading? That's what I thought.

As for demanding to see the original page you were looking
for... obviously that page is on MY server, or you wouldn't be reading
this page right now. And it was written by ME, and I own the copyright on it. Explain to me
again how you believe you have any RIGHT to look at it?

Regardless of what you, or Microsoft, or anybody else may think, I DO
have the right to decide what MY SERVER will or will not do. I have
decided that I don't want my web pages (except for this page, any my
copyright page) viewed by Internet Explorer. If you can figure a way to
view whatever it was you wanted, without my server being involved in the
process, more power to you.

If you don't like it, go find
somebody else's server to look at... or even better, use a
different browser and you'll be able to view any publicly-accessible
page on my site.

Here's another way to think about it... how many pages out there
won't work if you're not using IE? How many lazy "web developers" write
pages that force you to use IE, because they don't work with any other
browser? If it's okay for them to try and force people to use IE, then
it's just as much okay for me to try and prevent people from using IE.
It's the same thing, only in reverse.

So how can I view the page I was originally looking for?

Use a browser other than Internet Explorer. Have you been asleep
the whole time you've been reading this page?

Ha ha, you think you're so smart... I can just look at any page
on your site using Google's cache.

Do me a favour and grow up.

If you really feel the need to email me and tell me about this, don't
waste your time or mine. I'm perfectly aware that Google has a cached
copy of every public page on my site, and I'm fine with that- they're
not using IE to build their cache. Remember that my intent with this web
page is not to prevent you from seeing my site, it's only to prevent you
from using IE to do so.

Also, remember that if you're looking at Google's cache, you are
looking at what may be an outdated copy of the page. The bottom of each
page tells when it was last updated, but as long as you're using IE, you
will not have any way to directly check my site to make sure that what
you're looking at is actually the most recent version of the page (and
yes, some of the pages do change that often.)

I emailed you a question about this and you never answered. What
are you, some kind of jerk?

You're free to think so if you like, I don't really care... I
simply have better things to do with my time than answer stupid
questions from hotmail and yahoo "d00ds" all day long.

People who send me intelligent questions are answered- in fact I got
an email from an Opera user who had figured out the problem with the
Agent strings on his own, and suggested that I add a section to this
page which explained the problem, so that other Opera users would know
how to fix it. Good idea, thanks!

The thing is, in the first year after putting this page up there were
only about five intelligent questions, compared to a couple hundred
questions from people who either didn't read this page to see what the
problem was, or who wanted to tell me I was an idiot because Google had
a cache, or who just plain didn't understand the whole idea of "use a
different browser".

Sorry, guys, but if you're not even gonna make a show of trying, I'm
not going to spoon-feed you the answers. I only put a note about it on
this page in the hopes that you ankle-biters would stop harrassing me
about it.

And the funny thing is, almost every one of the non-intelligent
questions came from hotmail.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, msn.com,
netzero.com, or juno.com.

No matter what type of user you are (guru, intelligent, ignorant,
stupid, lazy, rude, whatever) I cannot recommend strongly enough that
you read Eric Raymond's document How To Ask
Questions The Smart Way. Even if you've read it before, it's worth
reviewing every once in a while- he changes it from time to time. I
consider this document to be required reading for anybody who uses the
Internet, and I have zero tolerance for people who ignore what it says
about asking others (specifically, me) for help.

I emailed you an insult, and you ignored it.

Yeah, I do that.

I've gotten about 20 of these "insult messages" over the past eight
years (I started this page sometime in 2002.) In the same time I have
received several hundred messages from people thanking me for
telling them about Firefox and/or Opera, or for writing a web page they
could show to their oppressive corporate overlords who forced them to
run "IE only".

Every once in a while, however, somebody crosses the line. I have no
problem with "four letter words" among friends, and I'm certainly man
enough to ignore somebody calling me names, especially when it's
somebody I've never heard of, will probably never meet, and will
definitely never do business with.

I don't really know why, but the message I just received from Jonathan Corbett of FourTen Technologies,
Inc. rubbed me the wrong way. I don't know if the guy genuinely
thinks he's going to somehow change my mind (hint: insults aren't the
way to do that), if he's upset because he was looking for some nugget of
technical information which is on one of my sites, or if he's just an
immature jerk who was looking to get a rise out of me.

Whatever his reasons, the message rubbed me the wrong way, and my way
of dealing with it is to post a complete
copy of the message, complete with enough copies of the names
"Jonathan Corbett", "FourTen Technologies, Inc.", and the domain name
"fourtentech.com", to hopefully ensure that the search engines will
start including this page when people search for his name or his
company's name, and they can see for themselves what a jerk this guy
is.